Business in Action, 8th edition

About the Book

No-frills, Objective-driven Structures Simplify the Learning Process

• Uses an objective-driven structure with easy-to-read chapters that eliminate frills, distractions, and wasted energy to help students learn and retain information. Every chapter is divided into six segments of equal importance, each with its own learning objective and comprehensive Checkpoint.
• Checkpoints confirm student understanding and offer opportunities for review. Each of the six segments in a chapter has its own Checkpoint to help students review material in manageable doses, rather than an entire chapter at once. With this approach, each learning objective is addressed almost as a mini¿chapter within the chapter.
• Information “chunking” helps students absorb new concepts in small, carefully measured segments.
• An uncompromised approach to high-efficiency learning, the book offers the same scope as other comprehensive texts while being up to 20% shorter.
• More than 150 Exhibits That Teach, uniquely designed diagrams, infographics, and exhibits that present vital concepts visually, minimizing reading time and maximizing students’ learning outcomes.
• Clear, concise writing with a conversational, professional style helps keep students engaged.
• Strong pedagogy tools build skills, awareness, and insight.
• Vignettes and case studies bring business concepts to life.
• Behind the Scenes chapter-¿opening vignettes start each chapter with a brief story featuring a business professional facing the challenges that make or break companies and careers. These vignettes offer a preview of the skills and concepts to be covered in the chapter.
• Behind the Scenes chapter¿-closing case studies end each chapter with a case that expands on the opening vignette and shows how the featured business professional used the skills and information covered in the chapter. Three critical¿ thinking questions encourage students to apply the concepts covered in the text.
• NEW! Five new chapter-¿opening vignettes paired with chapter¿-ending case studies concerning contemporary real-world business challenges, have been added:
• Chapter 2 discusses the forecasting challenges faced by Apple when the company was planning the launch of its iPhone 6 models.
• Chapter 3 discusses Cisco’s successful merger-and-acquisition process, which defied the odds when it comes to buying other companies.
• Chapter 8 discusses the Mexican building-materials giant Cemex’s innovative use of custom collaboration platform to help its global workforce solve pressing business challenges.
• Chapter 11 discusses Zappos’ unconventional strategies for finding and attracting unconventional employees.
• Chapter 16 discusses GoPro’s smart use of social media to build awareness of and demand for its rugged action cameras.
• NEW! New and substantially revised chapters and sections feature contemporary business topics, including:
• The Technological Environment (Chapter 1), highlighting the disruptive effects of mobile communication and connectivity.
• The Trans-Pacific Partnership (PTT) (Chapter 2), highlighting the controversy surrounding this major new trade agreement.
• Legal Differences in the Global Business Environment (Chapter 2), updating the European taxation controversy that has forced Google, Amazon, Starbucks, and other U.S. companies to change their business practices.
• Blueprint for an Effective Business Plan (Chapter 6), adding a discussion of the contrary view about the value of conventional business plans and the use of canvases instead.
• Social Networks and Virtual Communities (Chapter 8), adding an overview of Zappos’ reliance on social networking to keep its growing workforce connected.
• Gamifying for Healthy Competition (Chapter 10), describing how companies are using game principles to motivate employees.
• Gender (Chapter 11, in Dimensions of Workforce Diversity), updating the discussion of gender pay imbalance and uncovering the major issues behind the often-quoted statistics about women earning only 70 percent of what men earn.
• Test Marketing (Chapter 14), expanding the coverage with the new phenomenon of crowdsourced test marketing and crowdfunding as a way to identify potential hit products.
• Packaging (Chapter 14), broadening the discussion of how packaging decisions are often a tug-of-war between competing economic and environmental concerns.
• The Outlook for Wholesaling (Chapter 15), adding discussion of how e-commerce technologies let companies such as Amazon jump into traditional wholesaling and distribution channels because some incumbent players were too slow to adapt.
• The Outlook for Retailing (Chapter 15), expanding the discussion points of overcapacity, the emergence of mobile commerce, the growth of multichannel retailing, and data security and privacy concerns stemming from personalized marketing efforts.
• Physical Distribution and Logistics (Chapter 15), using Amazon’s new same-day delivery service and experimentation with delivery drones to highlight the importance of competitive physical distribution in the marketing mix.
• Public Relations (Chapter 16), explaining how social media have upended the traditional practice of public relations.
• NEW! More than three dozen new review, analysis, and application questions and student projects have been added.
• NEW! Enhanced coverage of the revolution in mobile connectivity and the many ways in which mobile is reshaping business.
• NEW! 14 all-new exhibits and 45 updated or redesigned exhibits, further expanding Business in Action’s unmatched portfolio of value-added instructional visuals.
• Coverage of résumés in the career planning prologue, including three sample résumés that show how to adapt one’s qualifications to an interim opportunity when the ideal opportunity isn’t available yet.

Unique Features Help Students Tie Concepts to Real-world Scenarios and Developments

• Test Your Knowledge consists of sixteen carefully selected questions that help students review information, analyze implications, and apply concepts.
• Discovering Career Opportunities gives students the opportunity to explore career resources on campus, observe business people on the job, interview business people, and perform self¿-evaluations to assess career skills and interests.
• Improving Your Tech Insights introduce students to such revolutionary developments as nanotechnology, location and tracking technologies, and assistive technologies for people with disabilities.
• Sharpening Your Communication Skills address one of the key skill concerns among today’s hiring managers; this exercise lets students practice listening, writing, and speaking in a variety of real-¿life scenarios.
• Building Your Team Skills teaches important team skills, such as brainstorming, collaborative decision-making, developing a consensus, debating, role playing, and resolving conflict.
• Developing Your Research Skills familiarizes students with a wide variety of business reference materials and offers practice in developing research skills.

Also Available with MyBizLab^®

MyBizLab is an online homework, tutorial, and assessment program designed to work with this text to engage students and improve results. Within its structured environment, students practice what they learn, test their understanding, and pursue a personalized study plan that helps them better absorb course material and understand difficult concepts.

Before Class

• The Chapter Warm-up helps you hold your students accountable for learning key concepts in each chapter before coming to class. The assignment consists of basic questions related to topics in the text, and gives students the chance to access their eText to read about the topics in question. Grading and item analysis in the assignment allow you to see what students know and don’t know.  
• Dynamic Study Modules help students study effectively on their own by continuously assessing their activity and performance in real time. Here's how it works: students complete a set of questions with a unique answer format that also asks them to indicate their confidence level. Questions repeat until the student can answer them all correctly and confidently. Once completed, Dynamic Study Modules explain the concept using materials from the text. These are available as graded assignments prior to class, and accessible on smartphones, tablets, and computers.
• Enhanced eText keeps students engaged in learning on their own time, while helping them achieve greater conceptual understanding of course material. The worked examples bring learning to life, and algorithmic practice allows students to apply the very concepts they are reading about. Combining resources that illuminate content with accessible self-assessment, MyLab with Enhanced eText provides students with a complete digital learning experience–all in one place.

During Class

• Learning Catalytics^™ is an interactive, student response tool that uses students’ smartphones, tablets, or laptops to engage them in more sophisticated tasks and thinking. Now included with MyLab with eText, Learning Catalytics enables you to generate classroom discussion, guide your lecture, and promote peer-to-peer learning with real-time analytics. Instructors, you can:
• Pose a variety of open-ended questions that help your students develop critical thinking skills
• Monitor responses to find out where students are struggling
• Use real-time data to adjust your instructional strategy and try other ways of engaging your students during class
• Manage student interactions by automatically grouping students for discussion, teamwork, and peer-to-peer learning
• Reporting Dashboard: View, analyze, and report learning outcomes clearly and easily, and get the information you need to keep your students on track throughout the course with the new Reporting Dashboard. Available via the MyLab Gradebook and fully mobile-ready, the Reporting Dashboard presents student performance data at the class, section, and program levels in an accessible, visual manner.

After Class

• Branching, Decision-Making Simulations put your students in the role of manager as they make a series of decisions based on a realistic business challenge. The simulations change and branch based on their decisions, creating various scenario paths. At the end of each simulation, students receive a grade and a detailed report of the choices they made with the associated consequences included.
• Video Exercises explore a variety of business topics related to the theory students are learning in class. Quizzes assess students’ comprehension of the concepts covered in each video.
• Writing Space. Better writers make great learners–who perform better in their courses. Designed to help you develop and assess concept mastery and critical thinking, the Writing Space offers a single place to create, track, and grade writing assignments, provide resources, and exchange meaningful, personalized feedback with students, quickly and easily. Thanks to auto-graded, assisted-graded, and create-your-own assignments, you decide your level of involvement in evaluating students' work. The auto-graded option allows you to assign writing in large classes without having to grade essays by hand. And because of integration with Turnitin^®, Writing Space can check students’ work for improper citation or plagiarism.
• Quizzes and Tests: Pre-built quizzes and tests allow you to quiz students without having to grade the assignments yourself.

Other MyBizLab Features

• NEW! MediaShare for Business. Consisting of a curated collection of business videos tagged to learning outcomes and customizable, auto-scored assignments, MediaShare for Business helps students understand why they are learning key concepts and how they will apply those in their careers. Instructors can also assign favorite YouTube clips or original content and employ MediaShare’s powerful repository of tools to maximize student accountability and interactive learning, and provide contextualized feedback for students and teams who upload presentations, media, or business plans.
• Figures that Teach address the challenge of getting students to read long passages of text by presenting vital concepts visually. This edition also includes a dozen of the most essential exhibits that encourage students to go online and watch an in-depth video presentation that explains the exhibit in more detail.
• Study Plans provide tailored learning. Why should students have to wait until the mid-term to determine their level of understanding? For every chapter of the book, students can take a pretest to generate a personalized Study Plan so they can see exactly where they need more practice. Multiple learning aids, such as videos, specific sections of the ebook, and flashcards immediately provide additional help. After students work through the learning aids they complete a posttest to prove mastery on the business topics.
• Business in Action’s unique Real-Time Updates system automatically provides weekly content updates including podcasts, PowerPoint^® presentations, online videos, PDFs, and articles.
• Learn More Online is a unique feature strategically located throughout the text, connecting students with dozens of carefully screened online media. These elements–which are categorized by icons representing podcasts, PDFs, articles, videos and PowerPoint presentations–complement the text's coverage by providing contemporary examples and valuable insights from successful professionals.
• NEW! More than 75 new Real-Time Updates-Learn More media items extend the value of the textbook.
• Learning Management System (LMS) Integration. You can now link from any LMS platform to MyBizLab. Access MyBizLab assignments, rosters and resources, and synchronize MyBizLab grades with your LMS gradebook. For students, new direct, single sign-on provides access to all the personalized learning MyBizLab resources that make studying more efficient and effective.
• Comprehensive online course content. Filled with a wealth of content that is tightly integrated with your textbook, MyBizLab lets you easily add, remove, or modify existing instructional material. You can also add your own course materials to suit the needs of your students or department.
• Gradebook automatically tracks your students' results on tests, homework, and practice exercises online and gives you control over managing results and calculating grades. The gradebook provides a number of flexible grading options, including exporting grades to a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel. And, it lets you measure and document your students' learning outcomes.
• Customizable Settings. MyBizLab enables you to manage multiple class sections, and lets other instructors copy your settings so a standardized syllabus can be maintained across your department. Should you want to use the same MyBizLab course next semester, with the same customized settings, you can copy your existing course exactly–and even share it with other faculty members.

About the Book

No-frills, Objective-driven Structures Simplify the Learning Process

• Five new chapter-¿opening vignettes paired with chapter¿-ending case studies concerning contemporary real-world business challenges, have been added:
• Chapter 2 discusses the forecasting challenges faced by Apple when the company was planning the launch of its iPhone 6 models.
• Chapter 3 discusses Cisco’s successful merger-and-acquisition process, which defied the odds when it comes to buying other companies.
• Chapter 8 discusses the Mexican building-materials giant Cemex’s innovative use of custom collaboration platform to help its global workforce solve pressing business challenges.
• Chapter 11 discusses Zappos’ unconventional strategies for finding and attracting unconventional employees.
• Chapter 16 discusses GoPro’s smart use of social media to build awareness of and demand for its rugged action cameras.
• New and substantially revised chapters and sections feature contemporary business topics, including:
• The Technological Environment (Chapter 1), highlighting the disruptive effects of mobile communication and connectivity.
• The Trans-Pacific Partnership (PTT) (Chapter 2), highlighting the controversy surrounding this major new trade agreement.
• Legal Differences in the Global Business Environment (Chapter 2), updating the European taxation controversy that has forced Google, Amazon, Starbucks, and other U.S. companies to change their business practices.
• Blueprint for an Effective Business Plan (Chapter 6), adding a discussion of the contrary view about the value of conventional business plans and the use of canvases instead.
• Social Networks and Virtual Communities (Chapter 8), adding an overview of Zappos’ reliance on social networking to keep its growing workforce connected.
• Gamifying for Healthy Competition (Chapter 10), describing how companies are using game principles to motivate employees.
• Gender (Chapter 11, in Dimensions of Workforce Diversity), updating the discussion of gender pay imbalance and uncovering the major issues behind the often-quoted statistics about women earning only 70 percent of what men earn.
• Test Marketing (Chapter 14), expanding the coverage with the new phenomenon of crowdsourced test marketing and crowdfunding as a way to identify potential hit products.
• Packaging (Chapter 14), broadening the discussion of how packaging decisions are often a tug-of-war between competing economic and environmental concerns.
• The Outlook for Wholesaling (Chapter 15), adding discussion of how e-commerce technologies let companies such as Amazon jump into traditional wholesaling and distribution channels because some incumbent players were too slow to adapt.
• The Outlook for Retailing (Chapter 15), expanding the discussion points of overcapacity, the emergence of mobile commerce, the growth of multichannel retailing, and data security and privacy concerns stemming from personalized marketing efforts.
• Physical Distribution and Logistics (Chapter 15), using Amazon’s new same-day delivery service and experimentation with delivery drones to highlight the importance of competitive physical distribution in the marketing mix.
• Public Relations (Chapter 16), explaining how social media have upended the traditional practice of public relations.
• More than three dozen new review, analysis, and application questions and student projects have been added.
• Enhanced coverage of the revolution in mobile connectivity and the many ways in which mobile is reshaping business.
• 14 all-new exhibits and 45 updated or redesigned exhibits, further expanding Business in Action’s unmatched portfolio of value-added instructional visuals.

Also Available with MyBizLab^®

MyBizLab is an online homework, tutorial, and assessment program designed to work with this text to engage students and improve results. Within its structured environment, students practice what they learn, test their understanding, and pursue a personalized study plan that helps them better absorb course material and understand difficult concepts.

Other MyBizLab Features

• MediaShare for Business. Consisting of a curated collection of business videos tagged to learning outcomes and customizable, auto-scored assignments, MediaShare for Business helps students understand why they are learning key concepts and how they will apply those in their careers. Instructors can also assign favorite YouTube clips or original content and employ MediaShare’s powerful repository of tools to maximize student accountability and interactive learning, and provide contextualized feedback for students and teams who upload presentations, media, or business plans.
  

• Learn More Online is a unique feature strategically located throughout the text, connecting students with dozens of carefully screened online media. These elements–which are categorized by icons representing podcasts, PDFs, articles, videos and PowerPoint presentations–complement the text's coverage by providing contemporary examples and valuable insights from successful professionals.
• More than 75 new Real-Time Updates-Learn More media items extend the value of the textbook.